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3HUIRUPDQFHDV&RPSRVLWLRQHeiner Goebbels, Stathis
Gourgouris
PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, PAJ 78 (Volume 26,
Number3), September 2004, pp. 1-16 (Article)
Published by The MIT Press
For additional information about this article
Access provided by Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile (27
Aug 2014 11:10 GMT)
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/paj/summary/v026/26.3goebbels.html
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2004 Stathis Gourgouris PAJ 78 (2004), pp. 116. 1
PERFORMANCE AS COMPOSITION
Heiner GoebbelsInterviewed by Stathis Gourgouris
For more than two decades the German composer Heiner Goebbels
haswritten music for theatre, ballet, opera, radio, TV, and concert
hall as well astape compositions and sound installations. He has
created music for manytheatre productions, such as Dantons Death,
directed by Ruth Berghaus, and RichardIII, directed by Claus
Peyman. In recent years New York audiences have beenintroduced to
his work with performances of Hashirigaki at the BAM Next
WaveFestival and Eislermaterial and Black on White with the
Ensemble Modern at theLincoln Center Festival. Goebbels had worked
frequently with the texts of HeinerMller, including The Liberation
of Prometheus, Shadow/Landscape with Argonauts,Wolokolamsk Highway,
and The Man in the Elevator, seen in New York at TheKitchen within
days of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It featured Mller himself
readinghis text, accompanied by the musicians Don Cherry, Arto
Lindsay, George Lewis,and Ned Rothenberg. Other authors whose
writings have been used in musicalsettings are Gertrude Stein, Poe,
Thoreau, Robbe-Grillet, and Kierkegaard. PaulAusters In the Country
of Lost Things was featured in Surrogate Cities. HeinerGoebbels
music is performed frequently in festivals on several
continents(www.heinergoebbels.com). In 2003, Sir Simon Rattle
conducted his orchestrapiece, From a Diary, in its Berlin
Philharmonic premiere. This interview wasconducted in New York,
March 19, 2003.
Welcome to the United States! I extend the greeting in the
fashion that Frank Zappa doesin his piece with the Ensemble Modern,
but with the present moment in mind. I wantedto ask the
art-in-relation-to-politics question last, and I feel I have to ask
it at the outsetbecause the historical occasion demands it. So, I
would like you to consider the problemthat ones art can never
entirely control the context of its performance. The New
Yorkperformance of your piece Hashirigaki happens to coincide with
the initiation of thebombing campaign in Iraq. If nothing else,
this is what the audience brings to thetheatre; its thought and
affect is weighed down by this occasion, whether acknowledged
ornot.
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2 PAJ 78
I doubt that an artist has much of an inuence on the political
relevance of hisartistic work. If art is too much on purpose, if
its destination is too obvious, it losescertain qualities as
artwork. As Heiner Mller points out: It is like harnessing ahorse
to a car. The car doesnt run well and the horse doesnt survive it
either. So Ithink its good that the artist does not completely
control the political context of aperformance. Especially if you
are a political artist and you want the work to beopen to the
world, to whatever occurs out there, I think one day or another you
willface such a coincidence. It is much better than to pretend that
your work isimminently actualized. Im very skeptical about direct
political relation betweenartistic statement and the message to the
audience. Once youre working in an open-minded way, I trust that
sooner or later the work will come to breathe in thesituation
around it. Im not sure how this will come to be with Hashirigaki,
whichis rather colorful and playful and perhaps light, except to
say that the piece alreadystands in a strong controversial position
toward my other work, which is rather darkand concrete.
I just nished an opera in Geneva, called Landscape with Distant
Relatives, where Ialso used texts by Gertrude Stein, from Wars I
Have Seen, which she wrote duringthe Second World War in the south
of France. Texts she wrote sixty or seventy yearsago nowadays seem
as if they were written yesterday. Its much better this way:
todiscover, almost by an accident, the political importance in the
material than topretend there is such importance in advance. This
pertains as well to Eislermaterial.I dont deny the historical
difference between this piece now and Hanns Eislerssituation. In
fact, I do the opposite. I rather enlarge the differences by
putting theoriginal musical material in a sound-frame which is
quite old-sounding (with theharmonium, the big bass drum and the
particular way of singing), precisely in orderto allow the audience
to discover how close a connection it can feel to this sound, orhow
touched it can be by this nostalgic material. I prefer that the
audience discoversthis on its own than insisting on how important
and actual his work is nowadays.
In fact, I had Eisler in mind as well. I asked the previous
question in the way one wouldask it of Hanns Eisler in the 1940s.
During the war and in exile Eisler similarly did nothave control
over the context of his performances compared to the way he did,
let us say,during the time of performing Die Mtter around Germany,
in 1932.
Actually, I just saw a Berliner Ensemble performance of Die
Mtter. Its veryinteresting how these words fall now on completely
different ground than even tenyears ago. I mean, in the 80s
everybody would be so provoked by their strangeness;they sounded so
far away. While nowunfortunately, I have to saythe oor isready
again for such words.
The story between you and Eisler is a very long story, as you
have acknowledged. But alsoits evident in the recordings, the
history of your recordings. Im very interested in yourvarious
glosses on Eisler and Ive gone back recently even to your earlier
work. Youobviously revisit Eislers work, as if drawing from an
unending pool. The record you didwith Alfred Harth in 1976 ( Vier
Fuste fr Hanns Eisler) is a bit of a deconstruction
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GOEBBELS / Performance as Composition 3
Eislermaterial, a stage concert with Ensemble Modern and actor
Joseph Bierbichler.Photo: Courtesy Lincoln Center Festival.
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4 PAJ 78
of specic Eisler tunes or even his tonalities in general; the
word deconstruction isoverused, but I cant think of a better one
here. While Eislermaterial is not quite adeconstruction; its a sort
of distillation, a contemplation of the core material of Eisler.And
there is lots of work in between. Im not sure how Id categorize the
Duck and Coverperformance (1985) in this respect. And certainly,
the brass group you founded in the late70s, Sogenanntes
Linksradikales Blasorchester, had a distinctive Eislerian feel,
though itwas also very loose structurally. How is all this
connected for you, both musically but alsopolitically?
I think all this started in the mid-70s. Listening to Eisler
changed my life. His workconveyed to me that there is a way in
which music and politics can be linked, not byforming one layer
upon another but by incorporating the political within themusical
material. Thats what I learned from him, and thats what made my
decisionto study music after sociology. So, I owe him a lot. And,
as you said, I performed alot of his work before I discovered
different modes of working, like literary texts, etc.But when I got
this commission for his 100th anniversary, in 1998, I discovered
thateven when I had sort of forgotten him Eisler was always there.
Even during myclose collaboration with an author who is considered
a grandchild of BertoltBrechtyou know, when I was working with
Heiner MllerI never thought ofEisler, perhaps because of a
different mode of working. With Mller, I worked withliterary texts
that rest on a notion of landscape or on texts and music where the
twoelements are competitive with each other, whereas Eisler worked
differently withtexts; he composed songs. But, of course, this way
of accepting literary texts as anauthority for the music is
ultimately very closely related to the work of Eisler andBrecht.
And its nice to discover after twenty years of working in different
areas thatan undercurrent relation was always there.
Weve been talking about Eisler but your work as a whole belongs
not just to Eisler but toBrecht as well in a direct sense. And
again, not merely to the Brecht/Eisler duo ascomposer and lyricist
but to both of them as dramatic and performative artists. Brecht
asa dramaturg, I believe, is crucial to your performative
understanding and it is in thissense that I see your association
with Heiner Mller. All of this constellation belongs to thegreat
tradition of Musik Drama in German art, but explicitly politicized.
(I wouldinclude Adornos reading of Wagner in this as well.) How do
you situate yourself in thistradition? In what sense is music a
dramatic performance for you?
I always considered music to be boring without an external frame
of reference.Music was most interesting to me when it had a
reference to the non-musical world.If this reference wasnt there
then music was just a private thing for me even in theearlier days.
So, I started to do a lot of lm scores and compose with words
andrarely did autonomous musical work until the late-80s or
early-90s. Thats why Ithink I discovered, with the help of Eisler
of course, that there must be a gesture inmusic. Music which
chatters away does not interest me. I can see the circumstancesof
my musical biography as quite logical actually. In my development I
came toinclude more and more media, but I didnt start that way and
didnt use them all at
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GOEBBELS / Performance as Composition 5
once but moved from one into another and so on. But the basic
assumptionmusicreacting or referring to other art forms or other
forms of perceptionhas been withme since the beginning. I like Bach
and thats where I come from, not Chopin, forexample, where the
pianistic virtuosity will always be celebrated.
Its funny, I had in my notes here a sort of off-beat question,
which I might as well asknow. What does Eisler owe to Bach?
The effect is quite direct. Actually, there have been certain
musicological studies inGermany which have pointed to passages in
Eisler exemplifying direct quotes fromBach, like in the beginning
of the Die Mtter cantata, where it is quite evident. Heloved the
functionality of Baroque music. There are also direct quotes
fromSchubert, by the way.
I remembered thinking this when I rst heard some of Eislers
cantatas. I had gotten myrst recordings in East Berlin around 1980.
Nowadays, much of this has been transferredto CDs, including the
great historic recordings of the pre-Nazi years with Ernst
Buschsinging. The arrangements are quite remarkable.
So, you would have heard the recordings where Eisler sings
himself. For me this washugely important. Hearing Eisler singing
the Ballade von der haltbaren Graugans(Ballad of the Grey Goose)
made me think of using the saxophone instead of goingdirectly to
the words, because the singing sounded so instrumental, the way he
usedhis voice, amazing.
Yes, there is a whole way of singing in this, lets say, epic
theatre tradition thats quitecompelling. Its a whole new sense of
musical performativity and Eisler was entirely self-conscious of
its importance. But I want to come back to the question about Musik
Dramaand Heiner Mller particularly. How did you become so
extensively involved with hiswork? What is the importance of his
work for you musically and dramatically? I meannot just the poetry
itself (which is singular and barely evaluated as poetry
outsideGermany), but his whole conceptualization or perhaps his
method. Is it a matter ofmethod?
I think that, generally speaking, the kinds of texts I like to
work with are always byauthors who strongly consider the matter of
literary form and structure as importantas the content, the
semantics. Hence the few authors that reach this level for
me:Gertrude Stein and Heiner Mllerwho have a lot in common, by the
wayandKafka, and Edgar Allan Poe in a way, because he was able to
instrumentalize his styletoward the intention of his text; he could
slip into different paths of writing. This isthe basic view I have
on literary texts, which is not only on what they tell but on
howthey tell. And if this question of how has a musical dimension,
like the rhythm inGertrude Stein or the substantial reduction to
single words in Heiner Mller, thenI can work, then I have something
to do, because I can make this syntax transparent.I can try to
enlarge the view on the architecture of the text, to read the text
with a
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magnifying glass. My interest is to share my observations with
the reader or with thelistener or, looking behind the authors way
of writing, to show some of their writingstrategies, to be able to
understand more levels than just the overall semantic one.
So, you are in a sense, as a musician and a composer, acting as
a reader of literature,making the reading of literature the primary
mode of making music. Thats a fascinatingway to go about it.
Thats right. Reading as a form of composition.
You know, I remember your performance of Heiner Mllers The
Liberation ofPrometheus, which I saw at Delphi, in the ancient
stadium in 1995, and remains stillone of the most memorable
theatrical experiences of my life. It was the closest I ever cameto
having some sort of understanding of what Aeschylean theatre might
have looked like,which had always been a mysterythe idea of the one
actor, particularly.
Its interesting you say that because you have experienced so
much Greek theatre.
Well, I was astonished. And I came there knowing the Mller text
very well. The onescene that really got through to me was the one
where Hercules is circling around the rockbecause the stench from
the encrusted feces is so intolerable, and he is circling around
therock for three thousand years, as the text says, and then
another three thousand years, andso on, trying to nd the proper
angle for ascent. And the way you did this, with ErnstSttzner going
way out to the end of the stadium, which from the audiences point
of viewon the front end, where the performance space is set up, is
pitch black, with only theshadows of the tips of the trees from the
surrounding woods showing over the Delphi gorgeand the starry sky
overhead, so that you lose all sense of proportion, just like in
the text.But the sheer feel of the experience was profoundly
theatrical, though the essence of theperformance was musical,
strictly speaking. The drama came through the musicalperformance,
not through the acting in the conventional sense, though Sttzner is
abrilliant actor, no doubt. The point is that the whole thing was
extraordinarily theatricalwithout any traditional theatrical
elements.
But the key for this scene, you see, is in the sentence itself.
The complexity of thesentence is performing exactly the difculty of
Hercules to reach Prometheusbecause the sentence doesnt reach the
point without a lot of grammatical obstacles.The circling and
circling creates obstacles and you cant understand nally, you
cantreach the point of resolution of meaning, lets say. Especially
not with the rstreading.
Lets extend this way of looking at things to the Schliemann
piece you did. First of all,what is the connection between the
theatrical piece, Schliemann Scaffolding (1997)and the earlier
musical piece, Schliemanns Radio (1992)?
I did a piece in Frankfurt in 1990, collaborating with a set
designer, Michael Simon.We called it Newtons Casino, but it was in
fact a piece about Schliemanns
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GOEBBELS / Performance as Composition 7
excavations and his diaries. And he did this amazing setit was
exactly somehowwhat I just described about the sentence of Heiner
Mller. He emptied out thewhole theatrethe audience was only sitting
in the balconyand he put in there agiant mobile machine with a set
of buildings which he reconstructed fromSchliemanns plan of the
wall of Troy. So, in a very customary way, he put togetherthe
sketch of the ruins of Troy in a three-dimensional constantly
moving machine-like thing. It was a wonderful work, in which we
included the texts of the diary. Butwhen we performed it we took
all the texts outwe thought it was better withouttextso it was like
a big installation of sound and music, voices, etc. For the
radioversion, I brought back the diary text.
Its interesting because in my sense of the radio piece it seems
as if Schliemann, in hisobservations, might be making a eld
recording, which is obviously a form of music aswell as history.
There is a real sense of almost ethnographic space inscribed in the
music.
Yes, in fact when I did the recording in the studio I cleared
out an area on the oorwhere the performer would walk around in
front of the wall of inscriptions. In thetheatrical performance we
subsequently did in Greece, I enriched the writtenmaterial, and
wrote a part for the folk singer, which was performed by
LydiaKoniordou.1 It was real fun working there. It premiered in
Olos.
Yes, I remember. I wasnt in Greece then, but my friends, who
knew of my interest in yourwork, sent me lots of press clippings.
It was quite exciting. And seeing the video later I wasimpressed
with the way you used Greek music. Which brings me to another set
of notes Ihave here, concerning your ability to weave together lots
of, let us say, non-Europeanmusical material with your own. The
work you did with the African musical material inOu bien le
dbarquement dsastreux (1993) was particularly
impressivethesepassages with the kora, the electric guitar, and the
trombone, all woven in a contrapuntalrelation to each other. What
concerns me is the question of how we can avoid, whenintertwining
all sorts of musical and cultural elements, a sort of postmodern
bricolage, akind of mixing of commodities? Might we speak of a
certain dramatic ethos perhaps, ora musical ethos, all of which is
also a specic politics? How do we avoid this trap?
Well, I try to be very aware of this trap, and I try to
construct a lot of criteria towhich I then submit my choice of
material. In the case of both pieces youmentioned, in the process
of one or two years in advance, I created a system ofoutlines,
which I probably install in my body because Im not able to be
totallyconscious of all this, that serve as a system of criteria. I
then pour through thissystem my musical material, and whatever
falls through it I throw out. And onlywhat remains along with these
criteria I then use. For example, the sound choice inOu bien le
dbarquement dsastreux was completely faithful to whatever has to
dowith wood, because the forest was somehow one of the elements
that patchedtogether this choice of texts of Heiner Mller, Francis
Ponge, and Joseph Conrad.Behind this theme of conquest and
estrangement, there was a whole metaphoricsubstratum built on the
different ideas of forest. So I only chose sound material thatt
into that. Im quite superstitious concerning material. In the
Schliemann work, I
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was very aware that all the materials must have their roots
around some center,which I tried to keep open of course, but they
were all related to this center beforeI chose them.
A thing that remains consistently fascinating in your music is
the entwinement ofcomposition and improvisation. Can you speak a
little bit about how you understand thisentwinement? How
improvisation might in fact be composition in itself? Or, how
itmight be linked to performance?
I think improvisation is the last step in what I describe as
building a system ofcriteria; its the last step in using musical
material, not the rst step. In this wholelong process of
composition, I always allow myself to improvise as well, but I do
sobecause I think that the paths which are already in place are so
limited, so denedby what I may have been doing in the period of
contextualizing the material, thatwhatever I may be improvising
will necessarily be within the path of composition.So yes, I do
allow myself to improvise in the composition process, but in the
veryend everything is completely precise. Though music will not
always be writtendown, it will be completely precise in the way it
is appointed. For instance, in TheLiberation of Prometheus there is
not one note written down, but every show is likeevery other. You
see, there is a lot of freedom in creating a very precise window
ofmusic to which all the musicians agree.
Since were talking directly about making music, let me ask you:
do you still play thesaxophone?
No. I havent played for probably . . . I dont even remember . .
. fteen years maybe.
Do you miss it?
No, I only learned it in three months to be able to found this
brass band. It was byvirtue of a certain musical-political
perspective, in many ways already prescribed bymy university
research on Hanns Eisler, with which I completed my
sociologystudies. And Im sure there were a couple of biographical
strong impressions whichhelped me to think this up: a lot of free
jazz concerts in the early 70s, as well as someother experimental
brass groups, like De Volharding, around Louis Andriessen
inAmsterdam. The nice thing with this band was that it balanced out
all kinds ofdifferent origins of musicianship. There were
professional musicians and composers,like my teacher Rolf Riehm, or
other colleagues from the music conservatory, andalso jazz players,
like Alfred Harth and Christoph Anders. And there were
alsopolitically interested musical dilettantes. And so we came
nicely together and wereable to balance our interests in a very
open and frank ensemble sort of way.
It is here that I also learned about collective judgment in
relation to variouscommitments, to decisions about where to
perform, or what to perform, how tolearn a piece, how to compose
it, etc.you know, collective judgment in musicalterms in the widest
sensewhich was very helpful and constructive. I never
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GOEBBELS / Performance as Composition 9
Black on White,music theatre withEnsemble Modernat Lincoln
CenterFestival. Photo:Wonge Bergmann,courtesy LincolnCenter.
Black on White, music theatre with Ensemble Modern at Lincoln
Center Festival.Photo: Robert Douglas, courtesy Lincoln Center.
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considered these decisions to get in the way of my aesthetic
point of view. I foundit a very helpful experience to accept that,
as a composer, you dont have to be alonein your room. It was very
important for me.
Well, you have always worked collectively and collaboratively.
This is self-evident in theentire range of your work over the
years.
Yes, thats why the collaboration with the Ensemble Modern was so
workable. Yousee, the political challenge begins for me with the
ways of production. As theGerman lm critic Georg Seesslen recently
pointed out, an artwork with manyparticipants and collaborators,
like in lm or theatre, has to reect the internalrelationships. As
an experienced spectator you can easily see if the director uses
theactors and musicians in a hysterical repressive authoritarian
way, or if he is able tocreate with them in a fruitful atmosphere.
You can see by the performance if thedirector is an asshole.
I try an open process, in which every light technician or
wardrobe assistant can easilymake suggestions and everyone in the
crew always has a fair chance to make the bestout of his eld
(light, sound, stage, costume, musicians, performers etc.). It ends
upbeing very precise, of course, because the combination of all
these media can onlywork properly with precision. Black on White
wouldnt have been possible withoutthe strong inspiration and
creativity not only by the staff, but also all the
musiciansincluded. They proposed to bring instruments; they
developed characters, atmo-spheres, gestures, etc. Also, the fact
that the music seems to have diverse culturalbackgrounds, the fact
that three different languages are spoken (and in the latestopera
six!) is not a postmodern invention, but only the outcome of the
internation-ality of the Ensemble: with American, Australian,
French, South American, British,Japanese, Swiss, Indian and, of
course, German players. You can hear it in the piece.This piece is
musically designed to be a portrait of a collective, not based on
specialsolo protagonists. I hope that an audience is able to
conceive this respectful,decentralized perspective as a political
quality, a gesture that liberates the senses.
And with Eislermaterial especially, I tried to build three or
four different ways of howthe musicians can incorporate the
material instead of just playing the parts. Because,you know, the
Ensemble Modern play some hundred concerts a year; they
performworks from all sorts of different composers. But, thinking
entirely in terms of Eisler,I wanted them to incorporate, to
embody, the material: rst of all, by not givingthem a conductor,
which means that each player must know exactly what everybodyelse
plays; second, by having them participate in the process of
arranging thematerial (who plays what); third, asking them to
improvise on the material, whichdemands that everyone must be very
aware of what they are riding on; fourth, bychoosing a stage
construction that, as youve seen in the video, is three sides of
asquare on an empty stage. This means to amplify and make public
the necessarycommunication of them performing without a conductor,
indeed by including theaudience as an important fourth part, fourth
side.
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GOEBBELS / Performance as Composition 11
It becomes sort of a Lehrstck in a way, because the musicians
have to go throughthis experience learning the material. When
theyre playing a very intimate stringtrio, for example, the violin,
viola, and cello are in entirely different sides of the set,having
the biggest distance between them, fteen meters or so. And when
they haveto communicate on this intimate passage even the last row
of the audience will noteit because it is so public.
Thats fascinating. You know, Frank Zappas work with the Ensemble
Modern strikes meas very similar in this way, although not the
splitting up of musicians. But he also spenta long time teaching
them to improvise with a certain attitude, a
non-musical,performative tonality, if I may say it that way. But
they are, of course, extraordinarymusicians.
Thats not the main point. Of course, they are incredible
virtuosi, extraordinarymusicians. But the real difference is that
they are a self-organized ensemble, and thismakes their motivation
so much higher than in the case of an orchestra where anartistic
director tells them tomorrow you play Eisler and the day after
whateverelse, and then we get a break. Thats the difference. They
decide whether they wantto work with me, where to perform, what to
do next, etc. As musicians, they decidecollectively on all aspects
of the ensemble, musical and non-musical aspects.
The way we are talking is leading me to ask about rock music. I
dont know why. Maybebecause we are talking about the group process.
I wouldnt identify you as a rock musicianbut the presence of rock
music is all over your work. So, what is the importance of
rockmusic for you? How have you found yourself inhabiting this
domain over the years, ormaybe, if not inhabiting it, going in and
out of it at different times, traversing it? Is ita matter of a
certain kind of sound, a certain ethos, a matter of technology,
ofperformance?
I grew up with classical music in my parents house and with pop
music. There wasno experience of contemporary music otherwise. I
was very interested in visual arts,contemporary visual arts. But
pop music was my most important inuence afterclassical music. And
my rst way of liberating myself from teachers who taught methe
classical repertoire was to play songs that I heard on the radio,
songs of theBeatles, the Beach Boys. Later on, I had a band and we
played Eric Burden, JimiHendrix pieces, whatever. But this is how I
learned a certain freedom, primarily inthe way of performance,
non-conducted performance, and denitely the freedom increating
music together as a group, which is really the most important thing
aboutrock music. I mean, what is Paul McCartney without John
Lennon? Even if JohnLennon didnt write as much, even if they didnt
actually write everything togetheror equally every part, etc., it
is by the very discussions they had about the material,by the
encounter itself, that the great pieces happened. The encounter was
thecreative instance. No one was ever, truly, working alone. And
the thing about rockmusic is also the belief in the structure. The
point is not so much to worry about theharmonies, not so much to
worry about the solos or the lyrics. Its really to pay
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attention to the structure, the rhythm breaks, the
orchestration, the soundthatswhat rock music is all about.
Would you consider Cassiber a rock group?
I guess we were considered an art-rock group or something. No, I
wouldnt considerus a rock group; we were too weird in a way. But
when we tried to improvise, we allagreed not to improvise as jazz
musicians. We improvised shapes, we improvisedsong forms. The early
Cassiber albums Man or Monkey (1982) or The Beauty and theBeast
(1984), though they seemed like collections of songs, were entirely
improvised.Chris Cutler and I were improvising forms and the other
members were improvisingsounds. In this way, we created together a
form of instant composition. We createdsongs spontaneously, without
rehearsing them. All these song forms were unre-hearsed, just
played straight. And later on, when we would meet for recording,
wewould recall these as shapes and improvised them as shapes. There
were never anywritten parts; there wasnt even an agreement to play
a certain theme in a certainway, four bars here or four bars there.
That was the magical moment of playing withChris Cutler, for
example: to be able to communicate in terms of shapes
withoutdiscussing it in advance. Chris has real understanding, a
great sense of symmetry, ofmusic as shaping. After thirty two bars
we could come back to an initial eldwithout countingthis worked
magically between us.
Its very interesting that you mention the notion of the song as
a form which Chrishimself uses a lot and has written about,
particularly in terms of the Brecht/Eislerrelation. I mean, for me,
the Art Bears fantastic performance of the song On Suicide . .
.
. . . Its a masterpiece.
It is a masterpiece. First of all, as a song, as an
Eisler/Brecht composition, but also, as yousay, this particular
performance. For me, this was a denitive moment in
understandingthis notion of the song as a form. And my interest in
rock music itselfor certainaspects of rock songwritingis fueled by
this notion and by this experience. A verysimilar instance is your
own song composition on Hlderlins poem Hlfte des Lebens.But I
brought us into the topic of rock music for another reason too: to
discuss theconnection between rock music and the piece being
performed today, Hashirigaki. Imean, I can sort of picture how
Gertrude Stein works in it and certainly how Japanesemusic might be
integrated in such a piece, but Im very curious about the Beach
Boysmaterial.
As I told you, in the 60s I was playing pop music on the piano
just by listening totunes on the radio. And I remember there were
one or two Beach Boys songs whichI had heard only once or twice on
the radio, and I could recall them but I couldntcatch them, I
couldnt play them on the piano, because the harmonies weresomehow
weird. Thats the one thing. Then, in 1998, The Pet Sounds Sessions
wasreleased, where they published the backing tracks, the rhythm
tracks, vocalharmonies, etc. And it was on that occasion that I
heard the complete Pet Sounds
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GOEBBELS / Performance as Composition 13
album again after so many years, and those couple of songslike
Caroline No andDont Talkreminded me of my failure. So I discovered
this material again, reallyfresh four years ago and, of course, I
understood immediately why it had been sodifcult for me to catch.
They have harmonies which just oat, they never satisfy thebass
register that brings them back to the ground; they keep on going,
never reallycoming to a resolution. Thats the secret of this
wonderful composition. Its not onlybecause of the melancholy
quality of these songs that this music is so formidable formeI
mean, its such a classic but also because of this strange oating
quality, asif everything is being lifted from the air. Its just not
grounded; its never grounded.
So, somehow this connected in my mind with The Making of
Americans, withGertrude Stein, because she does a similar thing
with words. She keeps words goingconstantly by changing some
elements in the repetitive language. If we attend to theletter in
her process of observation, of thinking, of writing, we might get a
bettersenseits very hardof what she means about love, about
sadness, aboutrelationships, about men and women, because she is
just evoking associations in aprocess of reecting toward the
reader, at the reader. But she is fading this sense andit is also
hard to catch, you seeso this is the connection that brings this
piecetogether. And then there is another thing: She starts The
Making of Americans as afamily history, but she immediately goes
off on a digression toward an overallhuman statement, which also
makes it ungrounded. She starts off on the ground,with the family,
the brother, the sister, the mother, marriagebut then
immediatelyshe tries to nd an overview from outside, about other
families, about America,about the whole world, about
humankindbefore coming back to her subject fromten pages earlier
with the words as I was saying. And this strange,
elevatedexpression works very well, I think, in the performance,
particularly when we do thelast song I Just Wasnt Made For These
Times which is itself an important phrase,coming, of course, from
Brian Wilson, but it could very well have come fromGertrude Stein.
She certainly felt untimely.
Youve also talked elsewhere about how you are drawn to the
melancholy song. Its evidentin most of the Eisler songs you choose
to performnot all obviously, you also take on themore playful,
ironic ones. But still, there is specic attention to melancholy
songs. Why isthat?
Well, probably because they are the truest ones. Thats the great
thing about Eisler.He doesnt exclude feelings. He includes doubts
and aggressions, hopes and fearshe includes everything. Thats why I
think these songs allow most of the truth tocome through. Because
they dont pretend just to be powerful, to have no doubtstheyre full
of everything.
Perhaps your insistence on this totality of contrary feelings in
music might be linked toyour preference for a certain tragic mode
in your selection of texts or in the way you frameor stage your
musical composition. I feel that in your particular conception (and
in thetradition of Music Drama I spoke of earlierBrecht, Eisler,
Mllerancient tragedy isgiven a remarkable actualization in modern
terms. Does tragedyand I mean this in a
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14 PAJ 78
Hashirigaki, a music theatre piece based on texts by Gertrude
Stein, presented at the BrooklynAcademy of Music New Wave Festival
2003. Photos: Courtesy Richard Termine.
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GOEBBELS / Performance as Composition 15
particular way: as the entwinement of drama and mythhave meaning
nowadayswhere the polis is so dispersed? How do you confront this
politics or aesthetics ofdispersion? How is myth important
nowadays, not as an archaic thing but as somethingvery
contemporary?
Probably tragic myth is the presenceand representationof powers
greater thanwhat we control. Because what you see in the
traditional humanist drama is moreand more conict being brought
down to the level of personal relations or conictbrought down to
psychological relations, which is something I really hate
incontemporary staging. Actually, the movies are better. The lm
industry hasunderstood that people need more than just love
stories. Of course, they continue toproduce lots of love-story
sorts of lms, but there have been many lms in the lastfty years
that try to represent other forces that we deal with in life,
stronger forces.The science ction genre exemplies this, of course.
But the point is that certainlms show an awareness that not
everything can be discussed and resolved in thecontext of a
personal relationship. Yet, modern theatre always seems to do just
that;even with the most political subtext, even when dealing with
tragic mythologiesthemselves, it often seems to try to reduce
things to some sort of domestic drama,and I think thats horrible.
Im just not interested in this sort of thing. As I haveexperienced
the world always as a political world, I think we face daily so
manyrelationships of power which are much stronger and cannot be so
easily reduced topersonal dimensions. So Im always looking for
references or representations of thatin literature or music or
theatre. And, of course, I dont use mythological gures(Prometheus
or Hercules, etc.) as heroic types. I use them as way of reading
politics,because I think the way the world is being controlled,
moved, shiftedor how livesare nished and startedis sometimes done
without mercy, without any possibilityof being a individual
story.
So, as a last question in this light, what is the difference
between being a political artistin the 70s and nowadays? Is it
simply a generational difference? Or is there somethingelse, some
other sense of timeliness at hand?
Well, in the 70s I was very involved in the movement. It was a
very lively, outgoingsort of movement, with people like Joschka
Fischer, Daniel Cohn-BenditI lived inthe same building with
Joschka, now he is ying rst class . . . For us then,everything was
so immediate: what do we do next? what do we do next Saturday?when
is the next political meeting or demonstration?that sort of thing.
But thishas changed. The context where everything is so immediate,
so precise, and whereyour work is but a trial, a commitment to all
that, doesnt exist. But my relation towhat it means to translate a
political experience into an artistic one hasnt changedmuch at all.
When I compare my work with Sogenanntes Linksradikales
Blasorchesterand my work on Eislermaterial with the Ensemble
Modern, for example, I nd thatits not all that different. Its more
elaborate now, of course. Ive got more possibilitiesand resources,
I can work with lights, costumes, sound engineers, and
virtuosiplayers, but the way we talk to each other, the way we deal
with each other, the waywe try to solve aesthetic and political
problems is not so different. When I look back
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16 PAJ 78
through all those different steps, which you have also followed
here today, there isnothing that I regret, nothing where I would
say lets cut this out or dont look atthat. This is something that
makes me very happy because there is a lot ofcontinuation and
development in these steps, and theres nothing to be
embarrassedabout or, in the opposite way, to long for the good days
of the past. I never had sucha feeling.
Then, I have to add one more dimension to that question: What
does it mean to be aGerman artist today?as opposed to the 70s,
working within the situation of a dividedGermany, which seems to
have been important for you and the politics involved in yourmusic.
I mean, it was important to the leftist movement in the West. Does
this matter atall? Is this something you think about? I understand
that you are a global artist, of course,but I wonder whether you
think at all about your position in German culture.
Well, this is something I owe specically to Chris Cutler, this
way of working at aninternational level. He was an important gure
in this movement because he was therst to open up the space for an
international collaboration of musicians and waysof playing. Since
that time, I think Eislermaterial is the only piece thats
entirelyGerman. I work consistently in an international context.
But I never ignored myGerman roots. I started very strongly with
developing my German point of viewthe music I grew up with and was
educated in. I remember the matter of playing jazzthen. Other jazz
musicians would complain: Hes got no swing. Hes much tooGerman. But
I was proud of the way I was improvising. And in fact, when I saw
theSun Ra Arkestra performing for the rst timeand it really changed
my way oflooking at thingsI remember being astonished at how these
people could do it all,both swing and improvise in the wildest
ways. And be theatrical too. For a lot ofstraight jazz musicians,
even in Europe, Sun Ra was too much. But its precisely
thiscollective way of making music, of bringing various elds
together, which appeals tome.
NOTE
1. Lydia Koniordou is Greeces foremost actress in classical
tragedy, with exemplaryperformances in Euripides plays,
particularly Electra. The way she is used in this play, as afolk
singer, is itself a defamiliarizing gesture.
STATHIS GOURGOURIS teaches comparative literature at
ColumbiaUniversity. He has also taught at Princeton, Yale, and the
University ofMichigan. He is the author of Dream Nation:
Enlightenment, Colonization,and the Institution of Modern Greece
and Does Literature Think? Literature asTheory for an Antimythical
Era as well as essays on political theory,psychoanalysis, lm. He is
currently working on a volume of essays onmusic, performance, and
the politics of sound, titled On TransgressiveListening.